Portability Hub:Flags FAQ
;"What is the Flags feature?" :Flags is a function of a wiki that allows the rapid and organized addition or removal of notices (known to many as "Message boxes" / "Mboxes" or "Hatnotes") from a given article. These notices apply to the whole article, and are intended to be temporary notes, managed from a central place. ;"So, what is a Flag, then?" :It's a notice Template that has been curated in a given wikia's Special:Flags and (hopefully) given user-friendly labels for title, parameters, and some additional metadata like who it should display for (use cases) and category. The term is used to refer to the management feature as well as the individually curated Templates as used on an article. ;"Can I get Flags on my community?" :At this time, very few lucky wikis can use this feature. It's in Limited Release. Mostly, these are volunteer wikis that have Community Council members helping to test the feature. ;"How do I make a Flag?" :Make a notice template, in wikitext or Lua. There's no XML syntax (yet) for notice templates like there is for Portable Infoboxes. If you have access to Special:Flags on your wikia, you can select the Template and add additional information to enable it as a Flag. ;"How do I apply a Flag to (or remove a Flag from) an article?" :If your wiki uses Flags, go to an article in a desktop, and click the dropdown arrow next to Edit at the top. You should see "Flags" as an option. Select it, and you'll be able to modify the Flags on that article. ;"So, a Flag is just another way of calling a Template (that I've already made) and putting it at the top of an article for a while without having to edit the article?" :Right. ;"Why would I not want to edit the article?" : * Maybe you're in a rush and want to point and click without having to type (a lot of) things (if at all). * Maybe you don't remember the syntax for the Template. * Maybe you want this kind of thing managed inside Special:Insights, so that you can see all the affected articles without having to look at Categories and DPL and Whatlinkshere. * Maybe you're a new user that wants to bring attention to an article for someone else to edit and you're not comfortable editing it yourself. ;"So, why not just use my existing templates? What is this feature for?" :Look at that last question's answers. You can't do any of those things without Flags. Also, notice that you're still using your existing Templates and can still edit them on their Template pages. ;"Are Flags for permanent notices? Are they meant to be used for notices that are always meant to be at the top of an article and never removed?" :No. They're meant to be easily added or removed. As a suggestion, either don't curate this template as a Flag, or create a REDIRECT to that Template using a different name, like Template:Example/permanent. ;"I don't see the Flags option under the Edit dropdown. Why not?" : * You probably don't have Flags available on your wiki yet. * You don't have any Templates curated as Flags. * You're trying to apply a Flag to an article that's not in the main namespace (aka ns:0). Currently, you can't put flags on Category:, User:, Project:, or other namespaces. Not even on Template: (before you start thinking of Inception-style infinite flagging, remember that /doc is also in Template:). ;"I'm on mobile. Can I see Flags now?" :Not yet. Emphasis on the yet. This feature was actually designed for mobile as its primary use case. ;"How do I see all my community's Flags? And how do I see all the Flagged articles?" :Special:Flags and Special:Insights, respectively. ;"I want to put a Flag on just this ONE section, but it keeps putting it only at the top. And when I tried to add this Flag-friendly template to just that one section, it was eaten by the editor! What do I do?!" :Don't panic.